Armacost, Michael. 1969. The Politics of Weapons Innovation: The

Thor-Jupiter Controversy. New York: Columbia University

Press.

Review

Gene Giannotta

10 August 2011

Despite the unification of the military services following

the Second World War, and the ostensible unity of purpose

engendered by the threat of the Soviet Union during the Cold

War, there was still occasion for conflict within the defense

establishment. Armacost (1969) presents a thorough examination

of the interservice rivalry between the Army and Air Force over

the development of an intermediate-range ballistic missile (or

IRBM). The Air Force’s dominance of the nuclear arsenal forced

the Army into a position of competition, for influence in larger

issues of strategy as well as budgetary support. This conflict

pervaded defense politics for much of the 1950s and 1960s, and

Armacost details both the relations between the services as well

as the attempts by the Defense Secretaries to get a handle on

the rivalry as a means of asserting their own control over the

department.

Following the spin-off of the Air Force into its own

independent service in the late 1940s and the unification of the

Giannotta ! 2Armacost – Politics of Weapons Innovation Review armed forces into one Department of Defense, conflict arose over

the response to the Cold War threat posed by the Soviet Union.

“Air Force doctrine was closely identified with the official

military policy” that promoted deterrence through a strong

nuclear arsenal (1969, 103), and so the Army was forced to find

ways to achieve its own niche. The desire to have a monopoly

over the intermediate-range ballistic missile (IRBM) provoked “a

vigorous competition” between the Army and Air Force during the

mid-to-late 1950s, because of the inherent tensions between the

services as well as the leadership style of those in the

Administration (1969, 82). Armacost points to “the ambiguity of

[Defense Secretary] Wilson’s public and private statements” and

his willingness “to equivocate on the roles and missions

problem” faced by the Army and Air Force with regard to the

IRBMs, as part of a larger strategy of provoking competition

that could “be exploited to reinforce the urgency with which the

Army and Air Force sought to overcome the imponderables of

missile technology” (1969, 83).

As the 1950s wore on, the conflict over IRBM development

took a number of turns, although there would never be an

ultimate decision on a winner. The Eisenhower Administration’s

desire for economy made the redundant nature of the two missile

programs odd, yet as noted above it also played into a desire

Giannotta ! 3Armacost – Politics of Weapons Innovation Review for competition as a means of ensuring effectiveness. In

Armacost’s telling, however, neither the Thor nor the Jupiter

were on the cutting edge of military technology. By the time the

decision was made to proceed with both in 1957, it was primarily

a function of the entrenched nature of the programs in the

congressional budgetary process and, perhaps moreso, the very

recent and salient Soviet launch of Sputnik I (1969, 172-179).

So many parochial interests were involved in the production of

both IRBMs, not least of which were the services themselves, and

the Sputnik had provided a crisis convenient for all of these

interests in that it gave decision-makers a reason (or excuse)

to put off the difficult choice and concede to production of

both. In the words of one Assistant Secretary of Defense,

“If the Defense Department suggested cancelling the

Air Force’s Thor program, a Congressional delegation

from California would be down our necks. And

elimination of the Army Jupiter program would have

half the Alabama delegation plus a couple of

representatives from the Detroit area fighting

us.” (1969, 177)

This was not the only example of research and development

decisions being driven by political concerns over congressional

response. Armacost also points to Army General John Medaris, who

Giannotta ! 4Armacost – Politics of Weapons Innovation Review advised his staff that it was “fighting a losing game” if it

presented budget requests for conventional items that may be

needed, but failed to play to the congressional biases toward

whatever might be the next big thing, but “it is far easier to

justify a budget with the modern items that are popular” (1969,

44).

Following the November 1957 decision, the next step was

offering the missiles to European allies as a means of

bolstering the NATO alliance and strengthening the doctrine of

deterrence. In some cases, like that of Turkey, the missiles

were accepted thankfully, while in other countries the offer was

less graciously received. In Britain, for example, the

government was quick to accept the American offer and thought it

an obvious decision; it would not only provide them with IRBMs

and a deterrent, but also a way to reconnect and strengthen the

“special relationship” with the United States (1969, 192-3).

Parliament and the public, however, did not see it that way and

when announced, the plan faced strong opposition, “based

variously upon technical reservations, political apprehensions,

and pacifist emotions” (1969, 195). The unforeseen complexities

of the “diplomacy of deployment,” as Armacost terms it, caused

some headaches for the Eisenhower Administration, with missiles

only being deployed to Turkey and Italy. Armacost says that “it

Giannotta ! 5Armacost – Politics of Weapons Innovation Review was a source of some embarrassment to the United States that a

benevolent gesture caused such political turmoil” (1969, 199).

Interestingly, from a longer-term perspective, the deployment of

the missiles to Europe may have been a key causal factor in the

Cuban Missile Crisis (along with the Bay of Pigs debacle). The

Jupiter missiles in Turkey, after all, were removed as part of

the deal to end the crisis and clear the Soviet missiles from

Cuba.

Out of all this came the reorganization of the Department

of Defense in 1958, which saw the creation of the Advanced

Research Projects Agency, situated in the Office of the

Secretary. ARPA, with its centralized position as a subordinate

of the Secretary and not any one service, was intended to

“facilitate the elimination of wasteful duplication” and respond

to “the humiliation of Sputnik” with an effectiveness that the

previous regime was unable to accomplish (1969, 228). Roy

Johnson, ARPA’s first director, is quoted by Armacost as telling

the Senate Committee on Aeronautical and Space Sciences, “It is

almost impossible to tell the Air Force that, ‘You have got to

have the Army and Navy working for you.’ But it is possible to

tell ARPA to get the Army, Navy and Air Force ‘working for you.’

This is a matter of psychology which is very important” (1969,

230). ARPA thus served a valuable function in promoting unity of

Giannotta ! 6Armacost – Politics of Weapons Innovation Review effort, at least in theory, through centralizing decision-making

authority regarding new undertakings, and would avoid the

problems that arose in the Thor-Jupiter debacle. But ARPA alone

did not make the research and development process clear and

straightforward. Calls for a “missiles czar” had been resisted

for a time, but in November 1957, William Holaday, who was

Special Assistant for Guided Missiles, became Director of Guided

Missiles. While “on paper, [his] new responsibilities appeared

impressive,” this apparent promotion only served to muddle the

picture even further, leaving “virtually everyone, including

Holaday, uncertain as to what his prerogatives under the new

mandate were” (1969, 232-33).

The Department of Defense Reorganization Act of 1958 was

intended to make lines of command clear, reflecting Eisenhower’s

desire to cut “wasteful spending” and “eliminate the public

impression that service rivalry was pervasive and harmful”. The

President also felt that the existing structure of largely

independent services would not be conducive to effectively

fighting future wars (1969, 234). To this end, the Act

strengthened the Secretary of Defense, giving him clear

authority over research and development decisions, and also

established “six unified and two specified commands...under the

direct control of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the line of

Giannotta ! 7Armacost – Politics of Weapons Innovation Review command was altered so as to eliminate the Service Secretaries

as intermediaries” (1969, 236). This effectively weakened the

individual services, making them “supply agencies of the joint

commands” (1969, 236). The creation of the National Aeronautics

and Space Administration (NASA) would prove to create further

conflict, although this took on more of a civil-military flavor,

as the new civilian agency found itself working to transfer Army

missile engineers to its employ and thus created some ire within

the Air Force, who saw NASA as a new competitor (1969, 238-44).

Ultimately, Armacost argues for an understanding of weapons

development and military policy-making as a clear example of a

typical political process like any other. “At each stage in the

Thor-Jupiter controversy,” he says, “critical decisions were

influenced by the interplay of power” (1969, 250). Robert

McNamara, in the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations, would take

greater control over the Department of Defense, ensuring that

disputes like those that flared in the 1950s over the IRBM

programs would be nonexistent or out of public view. Armacost

calls this “functional unification of the defense establishment”

a “subtle and rather oblique” process under McNamara (1969,

288). While this transformation was significant and some of the

particulars may prove lasting, Armacost also notes that as he

writes a new administration is undertaking the demands of

Giannotta ! 8Armacost – Politics of Weapons Innovation Review defense policy-making, and there is no guarantee that the

relative calm of the McNamara era would persist under new

leadership. The process of making crucial military decisions

like whether or not to develop and produce a missile, like in

the case of the Thor and Jupiter IRBMs, is full of potential

political pitfalls. The “interplay of play” persists in all

aspects of government, and the Department of Defense and its

undertakings cannot be said to be immune from the laws of

politics. It would be interesting to extend such a qualitative

analysis of technical defense policy into the McNamara years and

through the end of the Cold War. Indeed, the practical

implications of the “war on terror” or the response to

cyberwarfare - in terms of technology development or private

force contracting and their connection to rivalries between the

services and among the branches of government - could benefit

from a deep analysis along the lines of Armacost’s detailed

study. Especially as the United States finds itself in the midst

of an apparent revival of the economy drive pursued in the

1950s, with defense a major part of the discussion, the

intricacies of defense spending decisions are a worthwhile

avenue for study, both in terms of a theoretical and practical

appreciation of the politics of the budgetary and national

security policy-making processes.